McMahon, a textile and two-dimensional artist, is teaching Penn State Beaver’s six-week drawing class this summer, and Academic Affairs Director Carey McDougall, herself a sculptor, couldn’t be more excited about the offering.

“Art classes, especially drawing, are really teaching you how to see,” McDougall said. “We all look all the time, but how often do we really see?”

That was the exact lesson McMahon was hoping to impart on a Wednesday afternoon in June, during the first week of class, as she led students through a series of exercises designed to loosen their bodies and keep their eyes on the objects they were drawing, not the drawings they were creating.

“Remember,” she said, “we’re looking up and letting our hand follow what our eyes are seeing.”

It sounds simple, but it can be a difficult task for students more accustomed to gazing at screens and scrawling copious notes. It helps that the library classroom where they’re gathered has been transformed; desks replaced by drawing horses, pens exchanged for charcoal sticks, and lecterns swapped out for a still life of vases and baskets.

But just because the tools are different doesn’t mean the class isn’t demanding, McDougall says. In fact, drawing classes don’t just test and stretch the limits of creativity. They’re physically taxing, too.

“When you’re drawing horses, you’re in active posture,” McDougall said. “Part of drawing, part of being an artist, is using your body.”

But for all the challenges that come with the class, there’s also liberation. Drawing, like handwriting, has lessons but not limits. It’s the kind of thing you make your own.